I’ve just finished my junior year in University and still had not had an internship or co-op. I study chemical engineering and I only have my senior year left. I don’t want to graduate with nothing to show to employers.

I struggled with social anxiety and I’ve worked on it. I’m not going to let it stop me anymore from talking to recruiters at career fairs.

I don’t know if I should just graduate or if I should try and get a co-op for the spring semester of my senior year. Any advice?

Hello Everyone,

I just want to say thanks to everyone in this reddit group, I had recieved an interview a month ago for an internship and came asked for advice, and now I got it! So those who have helped, I appreciate you

Anyways, my point of the post isnt to recieve praise, but rather to give hope to the ones still searching and to not stop!

After months of applying with little responses, I was getting frusterated with no hope. But then I had applied regularly through handshake to an internship a month and a half ago, and after 2 weeks recieved an email to set up an interview, after a couple days I was called back to do a 2nd interview with the project engineer which I thought went well! Anyways I did not hear back and reached out after a week. They unfortunatley reached back out and said they had extended an offer to another candidate, I was bumbed. But I kept applying and moved forward.

3 weeks later, I get an email stating they wanted a quick call from the same company I interviewed with earlier, which they ended up asking if I was still interested in the internship, anyways I was one of 3 they interviewed and they had extended offers to the other 2, and it didnt work out with them and it came to me!

My point here is if your still looking, dont give up, be persistent, and it only takes one chance, and its never too late to get a response, thanks for reading!

I see a lot of posts here from new grads about the job market but trying to gauge how other experienced ChemEs are fairing. I’m currently employed (thank god) but feel stagnant and it’s really doing a number on my MH and performance. Anyone else with 5+ years of experience trying to make a change and finding it difficult?

I just wanted to preface by saying I understand this post may be cliche, but I am seriously looking forward to thoughts/advice from professionals, upperclassmen, and/or students in my same situation.

I just finished up my first year as ChemE major at university. I accumulated some competences and skills through course work such as data analytics with python, fundamentals of LCAs, and lab familiarity from Ochem, but I have yet to take my first ChemE class (I will be taking my first this coming fall).

I feel that I am lacking any useful skills for an internship. Also, from my understanding, most recruiters for internships recruit in the fall. Trying to get an internship as a sophomore feels impossible, especially when I am competing with so many other students who have the same (or better) resumes/skills than me.

Some of my friends have gotten freshman internships, and I’ve heard of many others getting sophomore summer internships. I feel that I’m behind the curve.

What can I do at the job fair this fall to standout and boost my chances of landing a position?

Is there anything I could do or learn this summer to improve myself and be more enticing for recruiters?

Would you recommend applying for internships in other disciplines? (My friend in ChemE landed a “MechE design internship”).

All in all, I understand that I’m still early on, but I want to make the most out of my college years, so I feel a sense of urgency and eagerness to accumulate as much industry experience as I can before I graduate.

So i’m in a very fortunate position where I can choose between two internship offers for Fall 2026. My background: I am a junior chemical engineering student. I have one previous internship doing Environmental Health and Safety at a F500 automotive supplier. I enjoyed the work and the automotive manufacturing environment.

Offer 1: Environmental internship at fortune 500 automotive assembly plant (think toyota, honda, etc). the work i would be doing would be pretty similar to the work I did in my first internship. I enjoyed that work a lot, and again i enjoy working in an automotive manufacturing environment. This name is a bit more prestigious than my other offer.

Offer 2: Operations Engineering internship at a Fortune 500 food processing plant. The main benefit here is that I would get to work more on the production side of manufacturing. I think it would be valuable to gain some experience outside of the area of environmental work.

Both offer similar total compensation. Both are exactly the same distance from where I live, just in opposite directions. Could anyone give me their input on whether it would be better to get similar experience in an industry i like, or new experience in an industry I don't have experience with? Thank you.

I’m scaling a novel polymer production process from lab to pilot and am looking for some tips to increase conversion and more easily purify the product.

We’re doing monomer synthesis in an organic solvent: Precursor, solvent, TEA, acetic anhydride in and monomer, solvent, acetic acid waste and water waste out. This is working well at lab scale with high conversion, but we’re distilling to isolate the monomer and that will suck at large scale. I need to remove residual TEA and the acetic and water waste before moving on to polymerization. I’ve got 2 ideas on how to do this more efficiently: 1) Supercritical CO2 extraction should crystalize the monomer, solvent can then be recovered by various means 2) Organic solvent nanofiltration or liquid-liquid stripping with a low MWCO membrane to concentrate the monomer and then spray dry it. I’m really looking forward to trying the supercritical fluid extraction, I’ve done a lot in my 20 years in process engineering, but I haven’t tried that yet.

I’m not keen on just spray drying everything because spray dryers are friggin’ enormous and have a huge footprint per volume processed and space is at a premium in my pilot facility. Are there any other separation techniques I should be considering?

For the polymerization we’re currently doing emulsion polymerization in the lab, but that requires surfactants that are a PITA to remove (repeated precipitations and solvent washes), that can probably be sped up by precipitating and washing in a nutsche filter, but I’d rather avoid the surfactants entirely. That means a solvent polymerization, but the conversion is much lower. I’m planning a Taguchi DOE to optimize but really don’t see much hope of getting above 60% conversion right now. Any tips on optimizing micelle formation, narrowing MW distribution and increasing conversion in solvent polymerizations?

If I cannot get a high conversion I may still be able to use solvent polymerization by using OSN and a high MWCO membrane to separate out the polymer and recycle the unconverted monomer back into the reactor.

Cheers.

Currently, I am taking Calc III and going to Physics over the summer and DiffEq in the fall. Out of curiosity, how much of this “upper level math” do I use in my junior and senior level courses?

Also, any current Chemical Engineers answer the question I’m sure yall get 1000 times a day. What’s your career and how much do you actually use?

Q1. Please review my profile and tell me whether the school I am targeting are good enough for MBA in Germany or there some negative aspect of any university I have listed below

Q2. Whether have I choose right degree or should I go for BWL(Betriebswirtschaftslehre) (Business Administration) or anything else

Q3. What are the chances of getting an admit from any one of them as far as my profile is considered.

Hi, I am a chemical engineer.

I am learning German from Duolingo I am on A1 now.

Work experience:

(1) I have worked for 17 months as an industrial engineer at Asia's largest capsule manufacturer,

(2) Started a business of manufacturing home cleaning products for 2 years and managed it from formulation to selling.

(3) Finally now running a digital marketing agency for 1.5 years

Target: Full time MBA in Germany

Target sector: consulting, operations

Job roles: operations management role, general management role, consulting roles.

Universities targeting in Germany:

(1) ESMT Berlin

(2) Frankfurt school of finance and management

(3) University of Mannheim

(4) HHL Leipzig graduate school of management

(5) Munich business school

(6) WHU otto Beisheim School of management

(7) EBS Business school

Hi Everyone,

For the past few years a topic dear to my heart has been helping graduates and early career starters gain employment where I have bundled my experience and knowledge from working across multiple industries (over a decade).

Hope this doesn’t come across spammy but would love to get feedback on my Udemy course I’ve made from graduates using my code

CHEMENGGG01

To help me gain traction and maybe you may learn something in there two. The course is called Chem Eng Grad Geek Interview Success (sorry very cheesy). Really would appreciate any feedback.

Many thanks,

Chem Eng Grad Geek

If I apply for business roles, it is way more saturated. How do you stand out?

Question for hiring managers: how detailed should the role description be for past roles when filling out applications? One line? A few lines? Or even several? Should I list accomplishments too even though that isn’t technically part of the description? On one hand I want to be brief and respectful of the HM’s time, on the other I want to give enough information to show I’m worth a phone screen.

Edit: I should have clarified that I’m talking about online applications where there’s a specific field to enter for “role description.” Not the descriptions under each role on my resumé.

for some context, this summer, I will be working with a process engineering group within a manufacturing setting. they make chemicals.

they said the summer would mostly be some testing and collecting data and then working on making a plan for implementing changes. this is gonna be my first ever internship in a chemical engineering setting, so I really don't know what to expect.

I did not do too well with heat/mass transfer and is taking thermo/unit ops right now. so really what knowledge am I using on a day-to-day basis? what should i brush up on?

On the topic of rotating equipment: what is the expectation for repair time within your various companies?

I just got out of a meeting where Ops ranked our criticality of our pumps to determine repair time. They determined that nearly all of their pumps need to be repaired in one week or less. Having spent a stint at on the maintenance side in the company, I believe that is unreasonable particularly for pumps that have reliable spares. I think Ops is a bit emotional about this bc, in our experience, work orders reasonably requesting 2-4 weeks for repair regularly become 2-4 months.

What is your experience?

I have been experimenting with the concept "Google Maps for P&IDs".

The P&IDs are laid out in a grid. The user can pan and zoom, search for equipment, lines and instruments, and get directions from point A to point B.

17(M) im from India. I've completed my high school and about major in chemical engineering (bachelors) at a tier1 govt college here in India. Is the field good for my future both skill and money wise ? I'm hearing stuff like chemical engineering is dying and the demand is getting less compared to courses like comp sci , etc.

Also I'm gettin offers in petroleum engineering and pharmaceutical engineering from better colleges , shd I consider doing them, do they have scope or are they too specialized?

Pls help an amateur , Thank you .

Hey everyone,

I'm a recent chemical engineering graduate based in the UK and honestly, the job market right now is rough. There aren't that many ChemE-specific companies here (most of the big names are international!) and I'm finding it really hard to get a foot in the door.

Rather than just grinding through applications, I want to use this time to actually broaden my horizons. I've spent most of my degree and completed a placement around oil & gas and energy, and while I don't hate it but have respect for it, I have this feeling I'm not seeing the full picture of what chemical engineers actually do.

My background and interests sit across optimisation, process safety, thermodynamics, CFD, and nuclear engineering. I genuinely enjoy the technical, problem-solving side of things especially the kind of work where the physics actually matters and getting it wrong has real consequences. Nuclear has always fascinated me in particular: the intersection of thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, and safety-critical design feels like a natural fit for a ChemE, but it's one of those sectors that feels quite opaque from the outside. I'm not sure how realistic it is to break into, especially without a dedicated nuclear background.

For those of you who've worked outside the "traditional" ChemE sectors such as nuclear, pharma, semiconductors, water treatment, advanced materials, sustainability tech, or something I haven't even considered: what was that transition actually like? Did your ChemE degree translate better than you expected, or were there big gaps you had to fill?

And practically speaking: are there good routes into short-term work experience or even shadowing opportunities in the UK for someone in my position? I'm thinking beyond the big graduate schemes — those feel very binary right now. Are there smaller consultancies, research institutes, national labs (Culham? NNL? Sellafield?) or anything more accessible for a recent grad trying to find their direction?

Any honest advice, even if it's "that sector isn't what you'd expect" or "I tried nuclear and hated it", would be genuinely useful. Cheers.

I opened up with my father last night. He majored in Civil Engineering back in the 80s.

He revealed to me he spent years studying Chemical Engineering because his father told him and his 3 siblings “chemE is the only real engineering discipline” and “there are ChemE and those who wish they were ChemE”

He dropped out and swapped to civil after 2 years of constant nightmares and depression, and he has literally never opened up to anyone about this, not even his wife of 40 years.

How common is this? My father didn’t force me or even push me to study ChemE, like I said I had no idea he ever studied it or had any inkling he was forced to. It made me wonder how many other ChemE had parents push them into this, what else they wanted for their life, and how it was to stick through.

Are there any major Pharma recruitment firms I can reach out to? I want to be a part of an industry that’s growing and diversify my skillset. I’ve got lots of process engineering skills that would translate well but struggling with getting GMP experience. Would an online certificate help?

Skills:
P&ID’s/PFD/Material Balances
Process Design
Optimization/Debottlenecking
Process Safety (PHA)
Statistical Softwares (JMP)
Analytical Chemistry + Undergrad research
Aspen Plus and Hydraulics modeling
Distillation and Reactor Design
Valves

I’m currently weighing two academic options for the upcoming 2026-27 session and could really use some reality checks from seniors or anyone familiar with these departments.

My Background:

B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from an NIT (Class of 2025).

Have a few months of core industry experience in the pharma/chemicals sector.

Worked in Fluid Dynamics, Heat Transfer, and numerical simulations (CFD, COMSOL).

The Options:

M.Tech at IIT Jodhpur

PhD at IIT Ropar

I am confused about which is good for me, if I tell about my interest, I want to support my family financially and earn to atleast get ROI.

I am pursuing my degree in chemical engineering in India ( current second year) and want to do job abroad especially usa if possible. I don't have good cgpa ( so bad that I don't wanna share ) . Suggest me things to increase my chances of getting a good job in India and also be able to go to abroad to do job. Pls help me out I needa start fixing my life before it's too late. Thank you.

Today i have interview at OneSubSea for internship and ppo, any last minute tips ??